Crane the Harmonious

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Crane the Harmonious</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

<label>Status</label><format>

Deceased

</format>

<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox>

Abigail Rowan-Sato, known publicly as Crane the Harmonious, was the leader of a martial arts cult before she was imprisoned in the Birdcage,<ref name="intro"/> acting as a leader of one of the cell blocks there.<ref name="intro">All in all, there were twelve cell blocks with leaders. That meant that there were eleven leaders with eleven lieutenants arriving. Acidbath, Galvanate, Teacher, Lab Rat and Gavel were leaders of the cell blocks on the men’s side of the prison. Lustrum, Black Kaze, Glaistig Uaine, String Theory, Crane and Ingenue were the female leaders. There were other cell blocks, but twelve was generally agreed on as a good number. It left room for discussion without too much chaos, and it left enough cell blocks leaderless that they had elbow room to do business elsewhere. - Excerpt from Interlude 16.y</ref>

Personality

Her diving motivation seems to be building a martial arts legacy, an ambition entirely her own even if it was greatly aided by her power. She knows how her actions might hurt her students.<ref name="SB1.3">nju8: Tell us more about her methodology with her students? Why physical intimacy? Why abuse?
A deeper understanding of the subject's body gives her a deeper understanding of the student's capacity for movement. Teaching-wise, she wants to be a true teacher, but she has very little empathy for her subjects (or for people in general). She's exceedingly self aware. But she doesn't give a damn. She's not going to strangle a student. She will make them kneel on a block of ice to build their pain tolerance or hold a pot filled with sand over their head for an hour. Some people have kids and those kids are their legacy. Some people write an epic length series about superheroes while they're dying of a degenerative disease. Crane has her martial arts. - Wildbow IRC archived on spacebattles</ref> These methods begin with kidnapping and scale up from there into harsh methods of martial instruction.<ref name="SB1.2"/> She saw no issue with aligning with villains to have these goals met.<ref>PLACEHOLDER </ref> Her interests and larger strategy was apparent to anyone who knew of her for any length of time.<ref> Ouroboros says, "The Western Zodiac are more mine to oversee. The Eastern are Kilkenny's. Should you decide to take on a contract, I would be your primary contact. Half now, half later. You would get either the benefit of Kilkenny's work, which you might appreciate given your recent injuries, which look nicely healed up... or my help, to expand your options, which might assuage any....worries with your power."

Kilkenny speaks up, "A woman named Crane the Harmonious has allied with local villains. She trains martial artists. I would not ask you to fight her. I would suggest you attack her 'dojo', for lack of a better word, her headquarters, and perhaps target any adult staff and scare the youths. She is trying to build something, and it puts her at odds with us.
[...]
"Then we will have you target the troublemakers, so our newest hire can sleep well at night." Kilkenny holds up a finger. [...] A second finger, "Crane's proteges and dojo. She works with the villain establishment, the rumors surrounding her are unpleasant, and she is an avowed enemy of ours."[...]And a third, - Excerpt from WD Lausanne</ref>

This focus on martial arts also meant she was disdainful of technology, at least when it came to using tinker tech to enhance ones powers, much preferring to rely on martial discipline and related arts.<ref name=LRP>One woman [...], her blond hair cut short, wears flowing black clothes, with the largest group that isn't the Suits present - four young men and women, teenagers, flanking her.
[...]
"The technology is only a gimmick," the blond woman speaks in English. "The fundamentals, solid training, will make you far stronger in the end, long after the power source dies or the technology is taken from you."

"She would know," Prince Lutin murmurs, leaning back in his chair. His voice is most likely audible to only the Suits around him. "Word on the street is she and her students have killed five of the armored ones. Refusing the technology."

"Five?" Durandal says, sounding skeptical.

The other heroes are starting to pack up, gathering their things. They write their names and contact information, and one picks up Prête's card.

"But none were the one she wanted to kill," Prince Lutin comments, as he watches the blond woman leaves. "She wanted to kill the armored one who is using her name. Crane." - Weaverdice 2014 Sept 17th of the Early Leussane RP</ref>

Has a great appreciation for tea.<ref> You reach Crane's place, which is broad, with hardwood floors and walls, one room vast and empty, with youths ranging from ten to sixteen, all sleeping in sleeping bags in the near-darkness, with only light from the hallway filtering in. Crane and Malin lead you to a separate room, a kitchen, where they prepare tea, with Crane being very particular about the methods of warming the cup...

...first, with a spoon within, waiting until the tea has reached an exact temperature before pouring. She gives you your selection of about 90 herbal teas, many of which you've never heard of, and has opinions on the benefits of each. - excerpt from WD Lausanne</ref>

Relationships

Malin the Fox

Cranes' colleague; the extent of what their relationship is, outside of it being between professionals, is unknown.

Students

She does seem to care for her students,<ref name="27.3"/> even if her motivations for recruiting and training them were suspect.<ref name="SB1.2">Q: Why the kids?
She's got a habit of kidnapping children with powers and effectively wrapping them around her finger (or vice versa) through a combination of harsh discipline, physical intimacy and the martial art style she teaches them, which sort of becomes an anchor for them at a juncture where they often feel very lost. She cares about them primarily as vehicles for her teaching. It's not a compulsion. She's interested in martial arts as an art in the same way Bonesaw is interested in her 'art'. - Wildbow IRC archived on spacebattles</ref> They are part of her legacy.<ref>If you hop on over to IRC (I think there’s a link somewhere), I dished some backstory on Crane there, for one of the people who’re writing fanfiction. Long story short, she’s a martial artist who uses her keen awareness of movements to craft martial arts perfectly suited to a given power, body type, personality and so on. In attempting to perfect her art, she kidnapped children with powers. They weren’t soldiers, but students. - Comment by Wildbow inVenom 29.2</ref>

Appearance

Crane the Harmonious is a thin woman with pointed features and short-cut, swooping, platinum blonde hair feathered at the edges, her eyes always look half closed.<ref name="27.3">A woman, thin, with her hair cut short, with swooping, platinum-blond ‘feathering’ at the sides, to the point that I couldn’t tell if it was just messy or styled that way. Her eyes were the sort that looked like they were usually half closed, her features pointed. She moved with a strange kind of fluidity, as if she had twice the usual number of joints, limbs like spaghetti noodles. They weren’t. It was Crane The Harmonious. Crane for short.

The records of her arrest were spotty, suggesting things had been redacted or hidden, no doubt to protect her ‘children’ that had gone on to careers in the Wards or Protectorate. She’d collected children with powers and raised them to be her soldiers.

She walked into the crowd, and came face to face with a hero, twenty or so years old, wearing a robe.

She stood on the very tips of her toes to raise herself up enough to kiss him on the forehead. The kiss was prolonged to a point that it went past weird. The next portal was already opening by the time she lowered herself and stood with her back to her old subject’s chest. - Excerpt from Extinction 27.3</ref> She tended to wear black martial arts style robes when possible, while in the birdcage she would have been restricted to some variation of the prison uniform.<ref name=LRP/>

Abilities and Powers

Crane's power involves the creation and use of a bead, orb or sphere that redirects motion/orientation in its area of effect, as well as a keen thinker ability that allows understanding of motion and ranges of motion.<ref name="list">Keen understanding of movement & fighting styles, could learn & teach the 'perfect style' for a given individual. Floating orb redirected movement in vicinity. | Independent | Thinker, Mover/Shaker - Wildbow's Parahuman List, bolded edit by Wildbow.</ref> The floating 'bead' allowed her to redirect movement in its vicinity.<ref name="SB1.1">Crane's power is a focus over movement. Her orb is controlled much like Sundancer's sun, but allows for controlled Jacklight-like effects for individuals inside it's area of effect, with a slow buildup for organic tissue vs. inorganic. This turns any movement into movement in the direction of her choosing. She also has a sense of movement and enhanced flexibility/agility that she's used to create her own martial art (primarily a striking style) and develop custom fighting styles for her disciples, based on their particular frame, mentality and abilities.

In combat, she uses the orb in conjunction with the striking style to counter her opponent's movements and keep them within the orb, at which point the effect reaches its capacity and they're about as fucked as anyone in Sundancer's orb is. Crane's orb changes only direction, but speed is, within the orb's area and general vicinity (~20') not necessarily subject to diminishing returns. Something that moves can keep moving.
[...]
Q: How does the orb work?

She leverages existing movement. If they're moving fast enough, she can drive them into the ground and break their legs/feet. If she has enough control, she can do this readily. But that takes time to accumulate and it's more efficient to just pull them off balance as they try to retreat, drawing them to her and then stab her big toe through their windpipe. She can focus on striking because her orb is a means of handling grappling.

Q: How so?
Keeping her orb close to her, she can effectively negate grappling as a tactic. A tackler is shoved a foot to the left, she moves an extra two feet to the right and forward, drives an elbow into their kidney.
[...]
- Wildbow IRC archived on spacebattles</ref> It could also work on powers redirecting things toward a principle target. <ref>Crane the Harmonious, as if she’d been waiting for a moment, used her own power.  A sphere, like Sundancer’s, only it was a distortion, like a glass bead that made things look upside down when you looked through it.

It moved forward until it was between the defending capes and Scion.

Once the bead was in place, every bullet hit.  Every power.
[...]
The bead moved, and more shots struck their target. - Excerpt from Venom 29.2</ref>

Aided by her secondary power, Crane the Harmonious has a keen understanding of movement and fighting styles and could learn as well as teach the "perfect style" to a given individual, thus she developed a specialized martial art style for herself, given her physiology, powers and combat style, and then did the same for her 'students', training them rigorously until it was ingrained in them.<ref name="SB1.5">Q: She's a master at every martial art?
She intuitively understands existing styles with her secondary power. She wouldn't necessarily be competent. But she can grasp what they're about.

Q: She knows all the techniques, then?
The memorization, strength and flexibility, the lessons and so on don't instantly come to her when she asks for it - but she can see someone performing the actions and know what's up. Understanding doesn't equate to knowing.

Q: I still don't get it?

It's a moot point - she's better teaching herself a customized style matched to her body shape, the length of her limbs, and to complement the harmonious sphere, followed by building the explosive strength and natural flexibility needed to employ it optimally. - Wildbow IRC archived on spacebattles</ref> She had many long-term students and other individuals,<ref name="PRT1"/> claiming to be able to deliver results with a willing individual in two weeks.<ref>She shakes her head, then draws a piece of paper from her pocket. She writes something down. "This isn't heroics. It's not villainy. It's self-improvement."

She finishes writing, and she hands you the slip of paper. "My name is Crane the Harmonious. When you're ready, come here. In a matter of days, I can make you as good a hand to hand combatant as anyone your age, powers and my other students notwithstanding.

"If safety is your mother's concern, then tell her that after I've trained you for two weeks, nobody will lay a hand on you without your say-so, and even guns may be a much smaller concern." - excerpt from WD Lausanne</ref> This is not immediate mastery but rather unrivaled insight and does not physically alter her body, only exercise, stretching and similar will do that.<ref name="SB1.5"/>

Tactics

Her orb gives her authority over existing momentum and thus movement, while she uses it she has a huge tactical advantage.<ref name="SB1.1"/> With it she can essentially achieve the type of physics defying movement that is very nearly flight.<ref>

Q: Can she fly? Let others fly?

Orb based flight for others isn't so possible, given she'd need to keep the orb close to them, but she can use it to manage Wuxia style movements for herself. - Wildbow IRC archived on spacebattles</ref>

She is still restricted to human reflexes even those of a highly trained incredibly athletic woman and with the aid of her bead.<ref>Scion’s beam lanced through Crane.  Too fast to dodge.  It passed within ten feet of me, hit Kid Win, hit the portal.

I could hear a structure collapsing on the far end of the portal.

Crane dropped like a puppet with the strings cut. - Excerpt from Venom 29.2</ref>

History

Background

Was a kidnapper and operated out of Lausanne for a time.

Crane would kidnap parahuman children and induct them into a cult-like group, using her power and abusive training methods to give them a unique, devastating fighting style. One of her several students eventually became a hero.<ref name="PRT1">PRT Quest p54</ref>

Crane was eventually caught and sentenced to the Birdcage.

Gold Morning

The events of Gold Morning were sufficient reason for her to be released from the Birdcage alongside several other prisoners.

She was killed by Scion together with Kid Win.<ref>Venom 29.2</ref>

References

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